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In Venezuela, online news helps journalists get their voices back

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The following is a CPJ Blog post by John Otis, CPJ Andes Correspondent:

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was rumored to be gravely ill four years ago, his socialist government was tightlipped about the diagnosis. Then in June 2011 a source in Havana, Cuba, where Chávez was being treated, told Nelson Bocaranda, a veteran columnist for the Caracas daily El Universal, that the president had cancer.

Fearing a backlash from the government, which has been cracking down on independent media, El Universal balked at running the story, Bocaranda said. "They didn't dare publish it," the journalist claimed in a video and Web interview in March, on the second anniversary of Chavez's death. "So I figured, 'OK, I will post this on my own Web page.' " Shortly afterwards, El Universal and other outlets published the story.

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Along with eroding civil and political freedoms, President Nicolas Maduro’s declaration of a State of Exception and Economic Emergency, extended in May 2017, dictated “strict regulations” to prevent “destabilization campaigns” on the internet

Venezuela’s economic crisis continued to affect the media industry, leaving dozens of publications in chronic danger of closure due to the difficulty of meeting basic operational costs. Many outlets also faced robberies, vandalism, and hackings.

The government refused to recognize a decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) ordering the reinstatement of the terrestrial broadcast license of television station Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), which was taken off the air in 2007 after a highly politicized campaign against the channel by then president Hugo Chávez.

This report documents 45 cases from Caracas and three states, involving more than 150 victims, in which security forces have abused the rights of protesters and other people in the vicinity of demonstrations.

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